If you want to break the habit of compulsively scrolling instagram or procrastinating from work. Or develop healthy habits like excercising and meditating daily then our guest on buzz by the bay this week is your go to person.
We caught up with the habit coach Ashdin Doctor. He also hosts a very popular pod cast by the same name, which is ranked amongst the top 10 in india, in the personal development space, and he recently authored 2 books as well. Rest assured you will get some awesome self improvement hacks in this interview.
Anchor: Anushka Jagtiani
Q: How do you differentiate a habit coach from a life coach.
A) The whole idea of habit coaching came about because people would rely on this one word a lot - called motivation. “I need motivation, self discipline to get things done”. Till I realised that I don’t have motivation and self discipline. What I did is I figured out how to make small small changes in my life that added up to something. That is where the whole idea of habit coaching was born. I knew there’s this whole industry called life coaching. The life coach tells you what you want to create from your life. A habit coach asks you what are the frustrations. What are the things that are currently missing that I’ve tried to do but failed at and now let’s see using the principles of habits how we can create them for you.
Q: If I came to you as a client and said I need to make small but crucial changes like sleeping on time, waking up earlier, being punctual - what would your approach be?
Ans: I would first see what are the main things you want to do and be crystal clear on why you want to do it. Very often we want to do these things because people tell us it’s a good idea to do it. But we don’t have a strong enough reason to do them. We have people who want to wake up early - wake up at 5 because every self help book says you have to wake up at 5 because the best CEOs wake up at 5. A client of mine who ran a huge business told me “from tomorrow onwards im going to wake up at 5,” and I said fine, “but as your habit coach I’m not giving the seal of approval but do it and tell me what you think”. So he wakes up at 5 and at 6 am I get a meaaage saying I’m bored I have no idea what to do. Because he didn’t have a reason to wake up at 5. Always having your intention is where I spend a lot of time with my clients and then breaking it up into what habits are and how to form them would be the next step.
Q: You mention 3 golden rules of habits in your book. Please elaborate?
First let’s define what a habit is. Many of us think that a habit is something formed in 21 days. A habit is any action or thought that you do at a repeated set frequency. What is important that habits can be actions - like going to the gym etc but habits can be thoughts as well. And we often don’t think of thoughts as habits. Like waking up in the morning and saying to yourself “life sucks” is a thought, but it becomes a habit because you do it every single day. And when you do it every day and say life sucks, guess what happens? Life begins to suck. But if you wake up in the morning and say life is awesome … slowly it will become awesome. So your thoughts are habits. How do we make a habit change? By following the 3 golden rules. Once you got your intention - the first golden rule is make it stupidly small… means you should feel stupid not doing it. Extremely easy means remove the friction from the process. Make it as easy to do as possible. Final golden rule - never miss two days In a row. This is the key to consistency. You ask people what are the difficulties you have with habits and they always will say consistency is the problem. Because they are trying to be very rigid. But we are not robots. We are human beings and life comes in the way…
Watch the full interview on Buzz by the Bay on the Free Press Journal YouTube channel
